November 13, 2012

McAfee Founder At Large In Belize, Wanted For Murder

The man responsible for the most popular anti-virus software and pioneering the shareware business model, John McAfee, is now wanted for murder in Belize, which he has called home for nearly 5 years. This larger than life story has governmental paranoia, fights between neighbors, guns and narcotics, poison, and dogs. Though the story sounds wild, it doesn´t sound all that far off for a man who sold off most of his possessions when the stock market crashed in 2008 to move to Belize to start a pharmaceutical company.

On Sunday, Mr. McAfee´s neighbor Gregory Faull was found dead in his house by his housekeeper. The police report states that Mr. Faull was lying face up in a pool of his own blood with a single gunshot wound to the back of his head and a single, expended 9 mm Lugar shell lying on the stairs leading up to where his body lay.

The Belize Police are looking to McAfee as a prime suspect and, according to Wired writer Joshua Davis, with whom McAfee has been speaking exclusively, the eccentric millionaire spent most of his day Sunday hiding in the sand while officials searched his home.

McAfee says he covered himself with cardboard so he could breathe and then buried himself underneath the sand.

“It was extraordinarily uncomfortable,” said McAfee in an interview with Davis, “But they will kill me if they find me.”

For the past several months, Davis has been investigating the Belize Government´s investigation into McAfee. In April, they raided his home, claiming he´s been processing methamphetamines and possessing unlicensed weapons. Government investigations and McAfee´s noisy dogs had apparently created a riff between McAfee and his neighbor Mr. Faull.

According to the exclusive Wired interview, Mr. Faull had submitted a formal complaint about McAfee´s dogs to the mayor the San Pedro, a nearby town. McAfee had discovered his dogs were poisoned a few days later on Friday evening. While it may seem at first blush that Mr. Faull may have been pushed to poison the dogs himself, McAfee believes it was the government, saying Mr. Faull was a dog lover.

“The coast guard dropped off a contingent of black-suited thugs at 10:30 tonight at the dock next door,” McAfee wrote to Davis in an email on Friday night.

“They dispersed on the beach. A half hour later all of my dogs had been poisoned. Mellow, Lucky, Dipsy, and Guerrero have already died.”

Though McAfee blames the government for the death of his dogs, they are blaming Mr. Faull´s death on him, calling him a “prime suspect.” Marco Vidal, head of the Gang Suppression Unit in Belize has said there is “absolutely no truth” to McAfee´s claims that the government is trying to frame him.

Gizmodo has also been following the story of McAfee´s new lifestyle in Belize and his run-ins with the government for his alleged dealings with drugs, gangs and weapons.

McAfee moved to Belize in 2008 to start a new company called QuorumEx which worked in the field of quorum sensing and discovering antibiotics derived from natural plants.

However, since his partner fled the country in 2010, he´s been reportedly dabbling in the art of “bath salts,” or manufactured drugs which are said to have hallucinogenic and psychoactive properties.

McAfee remains on the run from the police, saying: “Under no circumstances am I going to willingly talk to the police in this country.”

“You can say I´m paranoid about it but they will kill me, there is no question. They´ve been trying to get me for months. They want to silence me. I am not well liked by the prime minister. I am just a thorn in everybody´s side.”